Obama Ignores Egypt's Rising Islamic Radicalism

Mideast: The forces of Islamism are consolidating in Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi. But the Obama administration coddles these enemies of civilization and ignores State Department warnings.

We've known for years that President Obama is wedded to his notion of a "New Beginning," pretending the Middle East's unreconstructed Islamic ideology is compatible with Western Civilization. This week it became public that even its own diplomatic reality checks cannot shake sense into Obama's foreign policy.

John Rossomando of the Investigative Project on Terrorism reports that a number of State Department cables years ago let the White House know that the Muslim Brotherhood, the pan-Arab group behind Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, seeks to impose Muslim Shariah laws. It is not the "moderate" or secular force the Obama administration believes.

An Oct. 21, 2009, cable warned that Coptic Christian scholar Rafik Habib, former Morsi aide and ex-member of his Brotherhood-backed party, told the U.S. embassy that some Brotherhood members are "pragmatic but cautioned that they should not be viewed as 'moderates,'" according to U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Margaret Scobey. "Their goals are the same as 'conservative' MB's: a religious state where Shariah is applied to all aspects of life."

In a Feb. 4, 2009, cable, Scobey warned "younger members of the Brotherhood were becoming increasingly Salafi-oriented" — which means fundamentalist.

A May 27, 2009, cable found Scobey telling of Muslim televangelist Moez Masoud's fears, expressed to the embassy, of a "combination of Salafist ultra-orthodox Islam with MB political activism." Muslim Brotherhood and radical Salafists have since announced an alliance seeking an Egyptian Islamist state.

In fact, as early as July 2007, State Department cables warned that the Brotherhood sought "to amend laws and make them accordant with Islamic Shariah."

But there's other evidence about Egypt's course.

Over the weekend and without consulting opposition parties, President Morsi replaced 10 of his 24 Cabinet ministers, some of the new figures being longtime members of the Muslim Brotherhood. This comes after the embrace of a new, overtly Islamist constitution.

Egypt's currency plummeted to a new low against the U.S. dollar this week, no doubt because the new finance minister, Al-Mursi al-Sayed Hegazy, is a specialist in "Islamic banking," which opposes interest on loans.

Bassem Youssef, a popular satirist and TV host, is being investigated by Morsi's government on charges of "undermining" Morsi.

Morsi could use some satirizing. In September 2010, according to translations of interviews published last week by the Middle East Media Research Institute, he told Lebanon's Al-Quds TV that Zionist Jews were "bloodsuckers ... the descendants of apes and pigs."

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